Boughten

[Steve Kleinedler]

As a native Michigander it is completely in my idiolect. When I go
home, because I see my extended family in social contexts where food
is involved, I hear it all the time in contrast to homemade.

In fact, it wasn't until I was in my early thirties when I was working
on that run of B in the American Heritage Dictionary did I come to
find that not only is it regional, but pretty much everyone outside of
Michigan finds it pretty weird.

--short message because it's from my iPhone

On Apr 11, 2010, at 5:07, Michael Quinion <wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG
 > wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Michael Quinion <wordseditor at WORLDWIDEWORDS.ORG>
> Organization: World Wide Words
> Subject:      Boughten
> ---
> ---
> ---
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> The leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron (Eton and
> Oxford), was
> visiting a big bakery in Bolton last week. He made a joke about his
> failure to make his own bread: "So it'll be back to boughten loaves in
> future." This adjective (meaning shop-bought) isn't known in standard
> British English, though it was once in the dialects of southern
> England
> (almost completely defunct now, I believe). I'm wondering if Cameron
> might
> have picked it up in the US. Some newspaper comments I've read suggest
> that, though it's known, it's deprecated as dialectal or regional.
> What do
> you say about its US distribution and status?
>
> --
> Michael Quinion
> Editor, World Wide Words
> Web: http://www.worldwidewords.org
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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